Bobby Jindal rejects Mitt Romney’s ‘gifts’ theory: No, I think [Romney] is absolutely wrong. Two points on that: One, we have got to stop dividing the American voters. We need to go after 100 percent of the votes, not 53 percent. We need to go after every single vote. And, secondly, we need to continue to show how our policies help every voter out there achieve the American Dream, which is to be in the middle class, which is to be able to give their children an opportunity to be able to get a great education…. So, I absolutely reject [Romney's] notion, that description. I think that’s absolutely wrong….

I don’t think that represents where we are as a party and where we’re going as a party. That has got to be one of the most fundamental takeaways from this election: If we’re going to continue to be a competitive party and win elections on the national stage and continue to fight for our conservative principles, we need two messages to get out loudly and clearly: One, we are fighting for 100 percent of the votes, and secondly, our policies benefit every American who wants to pursue the American dream. Period. No exceptions….

The Republican Party is going to fight for every single vote, That means the 47 percent and the 53 percent, that means any other combination of numbers going up to 100 percent….

Gov. Romney’s an honorable person that needs to be thanked for his many years of public service, but his campaign was largely about his biography and his experience. And it’s a very impressive biography and very impressive set of experiences. But time and time again, biography and experience is not enough to win an election. You have to have a vision. You have to connect your policies to the aspirations of the American people. I don’t think the campaign did that, and as a result this became a contest between personalities. And you know what? Chicago won that.

Ezra Klein loathes Mitt Romney:

From the 47% to ‘gifts’: Mitt Romney’s ugly vision of politics: FDuring the campaign, Mitt Romney repeatedly promised seniors that he’d restore President Obama’s $716 billion in Medicare cuts… wouldn’t permit a single change to Medicare or Social Security for 10 years…. While the rest of the country was trying to pay down the deficit and prioritize spending, they’d be safe. He also promised the rich that they’d see a lower overall tax rate… promising tax cuts to the rich at a time when he said deficit reduction should be a top priority…. roll back the Dodd-Frank financial reforms and replace them with…something. Keep all that in mind when you hear Romney blaming his loss on “the gifts” that Obama reportedly handed out to “the African-American community, the Hispanic community and young people.” Romney was free with the gifts, too, and his promises to seniors and to the rich carried a far higher price tag than any policies Obama promised minorities or the young….

[P]erhaps it wasn’t the policies that were different, but the people they were being promised to…. Romney really does appear to believe that there’s a significant portion of the electorate that’s basically comprised of moochers. That’s Romney’s political cosmology: The Democrats bribe the moochers with health care and green cards. The Republicans try to free the makers through tax cuts and deregulation. Politics isn’t a conflict between two reasonable perspectives on how to best encourage growth and high-living standards. It’s a kind of reverse-Marxist clash between those who produce and those who take, and the easiest way to tell one from the other is to see who they vote for…. His voters are worth something to the economy — they’re producers — and they respond to legitimate appeals about how to best manage the country. The Democrats’ voters are drags on the economy — moochers — and they respond to crass pay-offs.

Romney doesn’t voice these opinions in public. He knows better. But so did the voters. That’s what you see in the overwhelming rejection Romney suffered among African-Americans, Hispanics, Asians, and young voters. They sensed that Romney fundamentally didn’t respect them and their role in the economy, and they were right. Alex Koppelmann loathes Mitt Romney:

Romney Blames Obama's "Gifts" to Voters for His Loss: [Romney] surely he can’t blame himself, or the campaign he ran and the staff members he hired, despite its and their obvious deficiencies: who could, looking back at that record of success? So he casts about, looking for some other explanation, and he lands on one: “gifts” that, to sway voters, the Obama Administration handed out to the President’s key demographic groups--“especially the African-American community, the Hispanic community, and young people.”

“With regards to the young people, for instance, a forgiveness of college-loan interest, was a big gift,” he reportedly said during a conference call with his campaign’s national finance committee held this Wednesday afternoon. According to the New York Times’s Ashley Parker, he went on to explain:

Free contraceptives were very big with young college-aged women. And then, finally, Obamacare also made a difference for them, because as you know, anybody now twenty-six years of age and younger was now going to be part of their parents’ plan, and that was a big gift to young people. They turned out in large numbers, a larger share in this election even than in 2008….
You can imagine for somebody making $25,000 or $30,000 or $35,000 a year, being told you’re now going to get free health care, particularly if you don’t have it, getting free health care worth, what, $10,000 per family, in perpetuity, I mean, this is huge. Likewise with Hispanic voters, free health care was a big plus. But in addition with regards to Hispanic voters, the amnesty for children of illegals, the so-called Dream Act kids, was a huge plus for that voting group….

[T]his is in fact what Romney thinks… the explanation that his campaign as a whole has settled on…. [I]n an article about the reasons why the Republican nominee’s team simply hadn’t expected to lose, Slate’s John Dickerson reported:

Romney advisers … envy [Obama’s] ability to leverage the presidency for his campaign. Young voters were told about new provisions for student loans and Obama’s support for same-sex marriage, an issue that appeals to young voters. Hispanic voters were wooed by the president’s plan to waive the deportation of children of illegal immigrants. One Romney aide also included the much-debated changes to welfare requirements as a policy aimed to win over African-American voters. “It was like they had a calendar,” said one Romney aide. With each month, the Obama administration rolled out a new policy for a different segment of their coalition they hoped to attract….

Romney talked about plans for the future. He wanted to keep his donors together somehow, he said—“to meet perhaps annually, and to keep in touch with a monthly newsletter or something of that nature”—so that they could help steer the G.O.P. and, presumably, the country. Which just makes the whole thing sadder: he still can’t see it. Romney seems to think that newsletters and meetings and money can solve the Republican Party’s problems…. He doesn’t see that he’s the problem: what he believes, what he says. Conservatives have constructed a myth that says certain groups--blacks, Hispanics, women, young people--vote Democratic because they’re stupid, because they’re lazy, and because they can be purchased with trinkets and baubles. It’d be one thing if they kept that myth a secret, but instead they shout it from the rooftops. Then, when it’s over, they wonder why those people voted Democratic again.

Romney… has never been good at disguising his lack of respect for the American electorate. His changing positions, his evasions about them, his misrepresentations—they all, ultimately, came off as a challenge: I think you’re too stupid not to fall for this. And there are very few people who appreciate being told they’re dumb, or the person who said it.

There are, of course, other, larger problems for the Republican Party to grapple with over the next few years. But they’ll have trouble solving many of them if they can’t get past this and realize that Democrats don’t have to bribe voters--not when their opponents are so interested in insulting them.

Salon loathes Mitt Romney:

The sore losers club: Mitt Romney… told his top donors… that Barack Obama had won by giving “very generous” freebies to key constituencies, including blacks, Hispanics and young people…. [H]e told donors earlier this year that 47 percent of the electorate would vote for Obama “no matter what” – because they “believe that they are victims” and that “they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you name it.”… Romney was roundly defeated last week, and the man who defeated him has now publicly saluted him twice. This is the time for Romney to show grace, humility, and maybe some humor too. Instead, he’s coming across like a sore loser, one who’d rather make excuses than give his opponent any real credit.

The same can be said for Romney’s running mate, Paul Ryan. During a series of interviews on Tuesday, Ryan offered this backhanded compliment to the president: “Well, he got turnout. The president should get credit for achieving record-breaking turnout numbers from urban areas for the most part, and that did win the election for him.” This too smacks of sore loser-dom. Ryan’s ticket lost in swing states without major cities, like Iowa and New Hampshire, and [Obama] won another key battleground – Virginia – by racking up massive margins in affluent suburbs. And if Ryan was using “urban” as a substitute for “black,” he’s off the mark there too. Sure, Obama received overwhelming support from an unusually energized African-American electorate, but he won plenty of states with small to non-existent black populations. The Obama victory last week was far broader than Ryan’s comment suggests, and rooted not just in demographics but also a very basic advantage on most of the issues that mattered most to voters. As with Romney, this is bad form – the sort of thing that might sound good to conservative diehards but that comes across as tone deaf to just about everyone else.

Ashley Parker loathes Mitt Romney:

Romney Blames Loss on Obama's 'Gifts' to Minorities and Young Voters: Mr. Romney said… he president had followed the “old playbook” of using targeted initiatives to woo specific interest groups — “especially the African-American community, the Hispanic community and young people. In each case, they were very generous in what they gave to those groups,” Mr. Romney said, contrasting Mr. Obama’s strategy to his own of “talking about big issues for the whole country: military strategy, foreign policy, a strong economy, creating jobs and so forth.”

“With regards to the young people, for instance, a forgiveness of college loan interest was a big gift,” Mr. Romney said. “Free contraceptives were very big with young, college-aged women. And then, finally, Obamacare also made a difference for them, because as you know, anybody now 26 years of age and younger was now going to be part of their parents’ plan, and that was a big gift to young people. They turned out in large numbers, a larger share in this election even than in 2008.” The president’s health care plan, he said, was also a useful tool in mobilizing black and Hispanic voters….

You can imagine for somebody making $25,000 or $30,000 or $35,000 a year, being told you’re now going to get free health care, particularly if you don’t have it, getting free health care worth, what, $10,000 per family, in perpetuity — I mean, this is huge…. Likewise with Hispanic voters, free health care was a big plus. But in addition with regards to Hispanic voters, the amnesty for children of illegals, the so-called Dream Act kids, was a huge plus for that voting group….

A person who was on the call, which included hundreds of participants, let The New York Times listen in.

I’m very sorry that we didn’t win. I know that you expected to win, we expected to win, we were disappointed with the result, we hadn’t anticipated it, and it was very close, but close doesn’t count in this business. And so now we’re looking and saying, ‘O.K., what can we do going forward?’ But frankly, we’re still so troubled by the past, it’s hard to put together our plans for the future.

Steve M. loathes Mitt Romney:

No More Mister Nice Blog: However real or fake this version of Romney is, the contempt he's expressing for people who don't have a soft life like his puts him up there with the Limbaughs and Gingriches. I don't know which would be more contemptible: really being this guy while pretending not to be throughout the campaign, or faking it now in an after-the-fact attempt to win wingnut love. But you know what's going to be fun? Hearing the righties tell us that if Romney had talked like this during the campaign, he'd have won the election. Don't laugh -- they really will say that.

Comments

Bobby Jindal rejects Mitt Romney’s ‘gifts’ theory: No, I think [Romney] is absolutely wrong. Two points on that: One, we have got to stop dividing the American voters. We need to go after 100 percent of the votes, not 53 percent. We need to go after every single vote. And, secondly, we need to continue to show how our policies help every voter out there achieve the American Dream, which is to be in the middle class, which is to be able to give their children an opportunity to be able to get a great education…. So, I absolutely reject [Romney's] notion, that description. I think that’s absolutely wrong….